


so are you to my thoughts as food to life

by FLWhite, zetaophiuchi (ryuujitsu)



Category: SKAM (France)
Genre: Bad Cooking, Bipolar Disorder, Birthday Cake, Cake, Cooking, Domestic Fluff, Fear of Death, Fluff, Food, Heavy Drinking, Light Angst, M/M, Recipes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2020-03-04 22:45:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 12,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18822283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FLWhite/pseuds/FLWhite, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryuujitsu/pseuds/zetaophiuchi
Summary: His mother always puts tarragon in her chicken soup. He adds a bunch to his basket. Sage—he loves the velvet softness of the leaves as he rubs them and the savory smell that rises from them—rosemary because it’s nearby, thyme because it’s so small and cute, fresh oregano. It’ll be the greenest soup Lucas has ever seen. Hmm, perhaps too green. He examines the recipe, scrawled on a notecard. Only two red chilis? He’ll get a few more, for the contrast.An ongoing series of short vignettes depicting the gastronomical lives of Lucas and Eliott through the years. (Note: mostly G- to M-rated except for select chapters.)





	1. Soupe de Poulet

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this idea rattling around my skull for some time and have been collecting various food-writing books to help with the brainstorming process, but so far I've only managed to read 1 (one) novel, a translation of _The Cook_ by Maylis de Kerangal. 
> 
> Then [FLWhite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FLWhite/pseuds/FLWhite) made me some chicken soup, and I was like, oh, okay, the time is _now_.
> 
> (Please note that FLWhite's chicken soup was delicious.)
> 
>  ~~Bon appetit~~ Enjoy!

**_ Soupe de Poulet _ **

_4 blancs de poulet_  
_3 ciboules_  
_2 échalotes_  
_2 petits piments rouges_  
_1 lt de bouillon de volaille_  
_75 cl de lait de coco_  
_2 cm de racine de gingembre_  
_½ baton de citronnelle_  
_sel et poivre_  
_sauce soja  
_ _quelques feuilles de basilic thai ou de coriandre…_

And a few green tips of fennel, Eliott thinks, wandering the produce aisles of the Carrefour; why not? Parsley, too. His mother always puts tarragon in her chicken soup. He adds a bunch to his basket. Sage—he loves the velvet softness of the leaves as he rubs them and the savory smell that rises from them—rosemary because it’s nearby, thyme because it’s so small and cute, fresh oregano. It’ll be the greenest soup Lucas has ever seen. Hmm, perhaps too green. He examines the recipe, scrawled on a notecard. Only two red chilis? He’ll get a few more, for the contrast. More shallots, too: he can’t get enough of them, of the gentle purple sheen of the bulbs beneath their modest earth-colored skins.

Later, as Lucas is gagging and coughing into the sink, really hacking, since he’s not over his bronchitis yet, Eliott will protest: When things are colorful, they’re nutritious.

“Be honest,” Lucas gasps. He turns the tap, hard, to stop its dripping, and spits into a tissue. “You don’t care about nutrition. You want color for color’s sake. You want to Jackson Pollock all of our food and watch me Jackson Pollock it right down the drain.”

“Are you upset?”

“No, fuck,” Lucas says. “Thank you. I appreciate the effort.”

“The chicken was cooked all the way through at least, this time.”

“At least,” Lucas agrees. “Oh, come here. Don’t look like that. Come. I love you.”

“I love you, too.” He buries his nose in Lucas’ hair, inhales.

“Next time, though,” Lucas says, “next time, please remember: a fistful is not an acceptable unit of measurement for chili peppers.”

 

* * *

  

** _Soupe de Poulet (La Prochaine Fois)_ **

_1 poulet entier, cru_  
_3 gousses d'ail émincées_  
_1 gros oignon, haché_  
_5 carottes hachées_  
_3 branches de céleri, hachées_  
_2 cc de basilic_  
_2 cc de thym_  
_2 cc de sel_  
_1 cc de poivre noir moulu_  
_1 lt bouillon de poulet  
_ _1 lt d'eau_

_Optionnel: persil frais_

_Les ajouts d’Eliott Demaury, 30 ans: 1 cc de curcuma (pour renforcer les défenses immunitaires de son mari), estragon frais_

“Eliott?”

He loves the creak of the floorboard just then beneath Lucas’ bare feet. He loves also the sight of Lucas’ hair, sticking straight up after his nap, and the blanket draped around his shoulders, trailing all the way to the floor. The bleary blue eyes make something in Eliott’s chest clench and his lungs swell; he’s an idiot puff-breasted bird in springtime, even now, especially now, after all these years, singing with sprigs of herbs clutched in claw and beak: _my love, my love._

“Darling,” he says, through the clouds of tarragon steam, “what are you doing up? You turn right around and go back to bed.”

“Something smells good.”

“Lies,” Eliott says. Old burns on his thighs remind him not to lift the ladle from the pot, and he gestures instead at Lucas’ nose with his elbow: Lucas’ poor reddened nose, sore from all the sniffling and blowing. “As though you can smell a thing right now.”

“No, really,” Lucas protests, shuffling closer. Eliott’s little king in his cape. “Fine,” he concedes, and as he meets Eliott’s eyes, the corner of his mouth begins to twitch toward a smile. “Fine. I heard some chopping and clattering just now and was intrigued.”

He rests his cheek against Eliott’s arm as Eliott swirls his ladle through the turmeric-gilded depths of the broth. The chicken, its meat falling from its bones, rests in a separate pan. The parsley glistens on the cutting board. He’s set out two bowls already, mismatched, two shining steel spoons.

“It’ll be done in fifteen minutes,” he says.

“Mm,” Lucas says, bending over the pot, “what a nice color.”

 


	2. Framboises

** _Framboises_ **

_300g de framboises_

Remove raspberries from carton. Wash carefully. Place on your ten fingers, _Amélie_ style. Hold your hands out to Lucas with their little red caps. Ignore the dripping of the faucet behind you; you never tighten it enough.

Grin: he can’t resist you.

Laugh as the first five raspberries are sucked away. He’ll linger on your thumb. Watch the flutter of his eyelashes, the flash of blue as he looks up at you. Murmur at the warmth of his mouth. Watch the playfulness leave his gaze. Steady your hand under the swipe of his tongue.

Maintain eye contact if you can. Blush if you must.

“And what were you planning to do with these, hm?”

Shiver. “A coulis, maybe?” 

“Ah, yeah?” Let him eat another, slowly. Press the pad of your finger down on the tip of his tongue. “They’re pretty tasty as they are.”


	3. carbonara by candlelight, and also spatula

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m fine, only hungry. And if I’m hungry, you must be about to eat your own hand, mm?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @ryuujitsu is way ahead of me on these vignettes, but I figured a new chapter from yours truly would not be untoward to tide us all over to Vendredi. Thanks as always for reading!

**carbonara by candlelight, and also spatula**

_Une boîte un peu déchirée de spaghetti_

_2 oeufs entiers et 4 jaunes_

_200g lardons_

_100g parmesan d'un pot en plastique_

_poivre_

_poudre d'oignon_

 

“We could just order a pizza,” Lucas says, chin resting on Eliott’s shoulder, watching as he cracks the third egg and carefully strains out the yolk with his fingers. “A nice, greasy, easy—”

“Is the water boiling yet?” He interrupts with enough force that Lucas shrugs and silently steps around a teetering trio of boxes for the bedroom to check the stove, on which sits their largest pot.

“Yes. How much should I put in?”

"Just dump it all in. I salted the water already.” Lucas frowns over his shoulder. “It’s fine, _hérisson_. Remember the last carbonara, that was nice, wasn’t it?”

“Y—es,” Lucas says as he begins to put in the spaghetti. “This box looks kind of old though.”

Eliott knows well the power of his sighs; he never abuses them, therefore. He sighs now.

Lucas flinches. “I’m sorry, _chéri_ , I just—I know you’ve got to be worn out.” He stretches; the pop of his shoulders echoes against the empty walls. “Fuck, that damn couch. If we move again, it’s got to be a place with a fucking elevator. I’m getting too old for this.”

“I’m fine, only hungry. And if _I’m_ hungry, you must be about to eat your own hand, mm?” He joins Lucas at the stove, where he grinds pepper and shakes cheap Parmesan and onion powder into the egg mixture one-handed. “Will you turn on this burner, please?”

The cooking spray was the only oil he could find among the boxes labeled, in Lucas’s worst handwriting, _cuisine_. With it, he coats the bottom of the sauté pan, then drops in the lardons. He shimmies a little to the rhythm of their pleasant sizzle, spatula in hand, and Lucas chuckles and begins to slip a slow arm around his waist.

“No no, none of that yet!” He pretends to thwack Lucas’s behind with the spatula. “The pasta, _hérisson_ , the pasta.”

Pouting, Lucas follows his instructions, draining the spaghetti with a huge billow of wheaty steam into the sink and holding the pot steady as Eliott stirs in the eggs and scrapes in the lardons, half-crisped, a compromise between Lucas’s preferred “incinerated” and his own fondness for “squishy.”

“It smells wonderful.” Lucas mimes wiping drool from his chin as Eliott stirs; this time, Eliott lets himself be half-embraced from the side and rests his cheek against the bushy top of Lucas’s head.

“And now—” He turns and lifts a hand to open the door of the cabinet of dishes that should’ve been waiting for deployment, and finds only a blank dove-gray wall. “Oh, fuck. Fuck!” He clatters the pot, hard, onto the counter.

“What happened? What is it?” Lucas darts in front of him, grasping at his hand. “A burn? Here, let’s put—”

“No, no. Fuck.” This rage that rises within him, he knows, is incredibly childish, but that only makes him guilty as well as furious. Through his teeth, he says, “We don’t have the fucking plates unpacked. Or the forks.”

“Oh, well, that’s fine,” Lucas replies, carefully. That care, that tenderness; they only make his anger roar hotter. “We’ve got this, don’t we?” The spatula, extracted from the nest of noodles, is lifted and held up like a prize. “And the candles, I think I saw some candles in the box with the spaghetti.” Lucas licks at the creamy flat of the spatula, looking up at him through low lashes. “Should I get them?”

“But—”

“ _El_ , don’t be silly.” With his free hand, Lucas grabs a fistful of Eliott’s T-shirt, his most paint-spattered one, reserved for the studio and moving days. “Come on. This tastes amazing. This _is_ amazing.” He gestures grandly at the kitchen and the apartment beyond, wielding the spatula like a scepter. “It’s, like, fifteen times the size of the old place. You’ll finally be able to hang up those big paintings from last year. And six burners! I’m going to blow up like a zeppelin from all the nice things you’ll cook me.”

He is silent for a moment as the fury fizzes and hisses, dying. Lucas, chuckling to himself, fetches a pair of mismatched candles, one squat and made of raw yellow beeswax, the other black and red and the length of Lucas’s forearm, one of their contributions to the potluck Halloween party last year. He plants each in the middle of a blue countertop tile and lights both.

“I’ll have to keep finding new recipes to test on you, then. To save you from zeppelinhood.” Ruefully, he lets himself receive a peppery, cheesy, eggy kiss. “Sorry. I don’t know what—sorry.”

“You’re just hungry, no? Good thing this thing is so big.” Lucas digs the spatula into the glistening mound of spaghetti, twirls a massive coil of them onto it. “Open sesame!” He dodges the spatula, rolling his eyes, and Lucas takes a bite instead; sauce flicks all over his chin as the bitten ends of the noodles slip, unwinding, back into the pot.

“Amazing,” says Lucas again, in a half-whisper, once he’s swallowed. His eyes are unblinking and terrifically blue.


	4. Tajine Jelbana

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A recipe from happier times.

** _Tajine Jelbana (Recette Secrète de la Famille Bakhellal)_ **

—Modified with special instructions for M. Eliott Demaury

 _~500g de veau_ (Note from Maman Bakhellal: or the meat of your choice, Eliott) _, coupé en gros morceaux_  
_~500g de petits pois frais écossés_ (M.B.: or frozen if you'd like)  
_3 ou 4 carottes, pelées et coupées en rondelles de 2 cm_ (M.B.: you don't have to cut them so exactly)  
_2 pommes de terre, pelées et coupées en gros morceaux  
__5 fonds d’artichaut, coupés en deux_

—Note from Imane Bakhellal: Be careful Eliott don't cut your fingers like the last time! Lucas will flip :) 

 _½ cc. de ras el hanout_  
_⅓ cc. de curcuma_  
_½ cc. de gingembre en poudre_  
_½ cc. de cumin_  
_2 cs. de coriandre ciselée  
_ _2 cs. de persil ciselé_

—Note from Idriss Bakhellal: BE GRATEFUL THAT YOU CAN USE THIS ABUNDANCE OF SPICES

 _3 gousses d'ail, pressées_  
_1 oignon, émincé_  
_2 feuilles laurier_  
_~3 cs. d'huile d'olive_  
_1 cs. de concentré de tomate_  
_sel  
_ _poivre_

—Additional special instructions of Papa Bakhellal: Cook with love, my boy! And call me if you have questions.

 


	5. Mika's Super Lover Lube

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The drink hits you about three minutes after you down it in two burning gulps. Really hits you.
> 
> You end up having to lie perfectly still for a long time to make sure you won't hurl on the floor as soon as you try to sit up.

**_Mika's Super Lover Lube_ **

une part de tequila

une part de vodka

une part de gin

une part de rhum

stir, shake, or don't, and ENJOYYYY

_;P 8==D ;P_

 

You skipped lunch. Too sick to your stomach with rage to even look at a piece of bread.

You were hungry for maybe a minute around four, when you first came in using the old key, but the coloc's fridge is a wasteland: Mika's payday isn't for another two days, Lisa has taken up juice cleanses, of all things, and Anatole, the new guy who took your place—who isn't even that new anymore—appears to eat only canned water chestnuts and ketchup.

So the drink, which you assembled for yourself from a note in Mika's handwriting stuck to the corner cabinet where they're still keeping the booze, hits you about three minutes after you down it in two burning gulps. Really hits you.

“Ack,” you say, coughing into your elbow, clattering the empty tumbler under the weirdly clanky tap and filling it with lukewarm water, which you glug down as well. You leave the tumbler in a puddle on the counter. You drag yourself to the couch, that same old sand-colored mess, saggier than ever, where you throw yourself down again, full-length, imagining yourself a medieval effigy as you lie with your eyes shut and your arms stiff at your sides.

For a brief melodramatic moment you also imagine Eliott throwing the front door of the coloc open and dashing to your side, dropping onto you, where he then presses his stupid beautiful face to yours and weeps until your shirtfront is soaked and then he'll kiss you and say how sorry, how extremely sorry he is, and you'll open your eyes at last and say you're sorry too and he'll hold you so tightly, still sobbing, but everything will be all right again.

Instead, the ceiling of the living room, dark-dappled in the light from the window, begins, slowly, to revolve above you, like a slightly stained plaster planetarium. You end up having to lie perfectly still for a long time to make sure you won't hurl on the floor as soon as you try to sit up. You're not sure how long, because at some point you drifted into a dreamless unconsciousness.

Your hand snakes unsteadily to your phone, slapped face-down on the coffee table minutes or hours ago. The screen is crammed with notifications: Mika ( _chatton, pls don't actually try that drink, it's just a dumb joke, fuck, be careful, i'm closing tonight but wait for me_ ), Yann ( _I wouldn't have held that back if I were him but I can also see why he did, if it never came up; Baz is dumb sometimes, u know that, he prob thought it was funny; r u ok bro? call if u want anytime_ ), your mother ( _Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. — Rom 5:3-4_ ), but you slide your thumb along all the bubbles to pop them, exhaling in a long huff.

The last messages from him are still those from earlier. You swipe at them again.

As you read backward in time, the messages grow more lucid in orthography but more blurred in focus, as though filtered through increasingly worse lenses; you scoff in disgust at yourself even as you mop at your eyes.

Super lover lube, more like super blubberer lube.

**16:18**

— _lucas youer toom uch for me rihght now_

**16:14**

— _seroiusly_

**16:14**

— _aeryou really doign this_

**16:12**

_—fucking seocnddaire befroe lucille, lucas_

**16:11**

— _im'soryr but it was so lognagowith her_

**16:11**

— _lucas darling gplease_

**16:08**

— _she'd nevr have done it otherwise_

**16:08**

— _she ws completely trashed_

**15:59**

_—you know he's always looking for an excuse to fire me_

**15:59**

_—and I couldn't just run off, legrand was right there_

**15:59**

_—she launched herself at me at the show_

**15:58**

— _I know how it looks. I sent her five messages to delete the post already. hérisson, let me explain_

**15:58**

_—sorry I didn't pick up! this fucking all-day workshop : < _

All for some random post that Basile sent to you with a string of ???s, mid-morning: an apparently passionate embrace and kiss full on the lips under pot lights, recognizably the gallery where M. LeGrand bullies Eliott every day from 12h to 19h.

Her hair is long and loose. Those curls and her slim-boned hands are the only parts of her visible behind the tufted tawny head and familiar back, in black, turned to the camera. She'd captioned it provocatively: "none as good as your first." On her profile, she is a very pretty woman smiling above the words _peintresse et photographe_ ; her uploads indicate a penchant for abstract expressionism, de-saturated photography, and chunky sweaters, but no evident inclination toward stealing people's boyfriends.

Lots of people have kissed those perfect lips, tasted that warm eager tongue. You know this. You are the first, but you also aren't. It's not a big deal. He's with you now.

Of course it was the stupidest possible thing to have said, or rather, typed. Maximally bitchy. Maximally theatrical. Of course you fucking said it anyway, as though you were still sixteen years old.

 _—How many others? How many other secrets, Eliott?_ You think of a gold necklace and a handsome smile as you punch the words in and stab your thumb on “send.”

And like sometimes happens, you say stupid things and then you begin to treat them like they're real.

So you're going to be the one sobbing and saying how extremely sorry you are, once you find him again. You know it, but now you don't care. You don't care about being right anymore. You only want to hear his steady breath and feel his heart's slow reassuring beat, feel his lean flank under your hand.

Maybe he'll knock quietly at the door a quarter-hour before Mika thumps his way up the stairs from the closing shift. Or you'll slip into the cool still night, walk fast to your own door, your own couch, and you'll find him there half-asleep, curled. Either way, he'll be waiting, his arms ready to hold you tightly, so tightly, though he'll make a silly face at the sweet stink of alcohol rising from your every pore, first, and say, “Mika strikes again?” And you’ll answer with a kiss.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's put it this way. I heard Niels Rahou talk about his love of D~RAMA and I was like, yes, Niels, I too am a gold lamé drama gay. Sorry, @ryuujitsu, and you, dear readers, for messing up our adorable cozy lovefest.


	6. irrational numbers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eliott tries to bake. There are fractions.

******Today, 17:39**

**~mon~mec~**

_hérisson_

are you done with the colloquium yet

can you divide 16 by 3 for me quick

 

**17:40**

**~mon~mec~**

never mind I found the calculator thingy

 

**17:41**

**~mon~mec~**

so 0.33, that’s the same as 1/3, right

but it’s more, isn’t it? 3/10?

and 3/10 of 420 is

do you multiply by 10 first or

do you divide by the 3

 

**17:42**

**~mon~mec~**

I got 1400

that seems like a lot though?

 

**17:43**

**~mon~mec~**

???????????

 

**18:19**

**You**

Hi sorry _chéri_

You divide by 10 then

 

**~mon~mec~**

oh, you divide first? oh

oops

 

**You**

…

Are you okay?

 

**18:20**

**~mon~mec~**

don’t worry <3

the batter looked yummy

put it in the oven already

 

**You**

Im comign home rightnow doy ou have the extinguisher ready

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eliott DOES manage to scrape by in math in his bac on the second try, in this universe; he'd want me to tell you that much.


	7. Fallafel Spécial, Thé Vert

**_Fallafel Spécial_ **

_houmous_  
_baba ghanouj_  
_salade turque_  
_aubergines frites_  
_concombres et tomates_  
_3 falafels énormes_  
_tahini_  
_le pita moelleux_

_€8.50  
_ _L’As du Fallafel, 34 rue des Rosiers, Le Marais_

Buy two: one for you, one for Eliott. What a cold, gloomy day in Paris! It’s raining. You’ll try to eat while walking quickly, and this is how you will lose one of your three _falafels énormes_ , you’ll roll it right into a puddle and then the gutter, and Eliott will laugh and touch your hand with his tzatziki-covered fingertips and feed you half of his third chickpea fritter. And you’ll look at him and let him brush tahini from the corner of your mouth and think, _What an angel._  While the rain starts to pour down all around you. 

 

* * *

 

**_Thé Vert_ **

  1. _Utilisez 1 cc. du thé vert pour chaque .5L de l’eau_
  2. _Faites bouillir de l’eau mais attendez jusqu'à ce qu'il refroidisse à 70˚ C_
  3. _Laissez infuser pendant 1-3 minutes_
  4. _Ne buvez pas_
  5. _Laissez infuser dans la théière pendant une semaine…_



By the time Lucas finds the teapot and tentatively lifts the lid—and closes it again immediately, wincing—it’s gotten so moldy he half expects it to be sentient, to be speaking, even. Reciting verses to him.

He takes the teapot to the kitchen and empties it. He rinses it out, then lets it sit, filled to the brim with hot soapy water.

Cocooned beneath a blanket in the darkness of the living room, Eliott sleeps and sleeps.

Lucas writes him a note, slips it into his sketchbook. Goes back to his treatise on photovoltaics.

He’ll brew Eliott a cup of tea when he wakes.

 


	8. Sushi I (Blossom)

_**[Sushi I (Blossom)](https://yosushi.com/getattachment/6976a5e7-3f0f-4371-a88b-7450dc16bf38/attachment.aspx) ** _

_prawn katsu_  
_avocado_  
_nori_  
_shiso yukari  
_ _spicy tuna_

The prawn roll is dusted with powdery purple flecks; with its bright orange spicy tuna topping and deep green nori wrapper, it really does look a bit like a spring blossom. Lucas taps his card, collects the little black foam tray, with its single plastic leaf and dots of wasabi and pink pickled ginger, and returns to his gate.

The chopsticks break badly, with one big chunk on the right and a pathetic sliver of wood on the left.

He feels a bit like the sliver—thin and sheared and sharp, ready to fill someone’s mouth with splinters.

Two weeks, two weeks. The entire month of May will be gone by the time he returns, and the first two weeks of it were over too quickly.

All those mornings in bed with Eliott draped around him, slow to wake, Eliott’s sleepy red-rimmed smile, the halo of light on Eliott’s hair on his pillow, the pale undersides of his feet and the knobs of his ankles protruding from beneath the heap of blankets. The soft, sour, lazy kisses, on the mouth or ear. _Good morning._ The buds on the trees outside their window unfurling steadily into curtains of green. Their coffees steaming side by side on the counter in the quiet before he had to run for the métro: his own, in plain smooth store-bought navy, and Eliott’s, the misshapen red monstrosity that Lucas made for him in a ceramics café after one too many beers with Le Gang.

He sits at the center of a row of empty seats with his bag between his feet and his sushi tray balanced on his knees. Eliott must be eating dinner now, too, alone in their apartment. Perhaps he feels lonely. Perhaps he feels relieved; perhaps he’s playing some EDM right now, too loud, much too loud, and dancing around the apartment in his underpants.

 _Missing you already_ , he texts. _Eat properly, okay? A meal, not a bit of toast or part of a lettuce._

He consumes the roll with slow methodical bites. The purple dusting tastes strange and salty, thick against his tongue and the roof of his mouth. Fucking project. Fucking job. He’ll find another, he thinks, another that won’t send him away from Paris. A job with no satellite offices and no Americans.

Eliott, Eliott.

His phone buzzes.

Eliott sends a picture of a full plate of leftovers. Bread, pieces of asparagus, and fragments of the boeuf bourguignon from three days before. And sparkling water. _I’m eating well, as you can see. I hope you are too._

_—Just airport sushi. Shit, we’re boarding._

_—Call me when you land_. _Call me and say goodnight._

 _—It’s a nine-hour flight. If I call you, it’ll be to say good morning, silly_.

Eliott starts to type but doesn’t send anything. He’s probably pouting. Lucas grins.

_—I’ll call. I promise. Don’t go to bed too late._

_—You too, don’t stay up watching superhero movies._

_—Hey, I have a backlog to catch up on._

_20,143 minutes,_ Eliott says then, and Lucas swallows hard.

 _20,142_ , he replies.

_—20,141._

_—20,140._

They count down in this manner until Lucas has to switch his phone to airplane mode. Tomorrow, Eliott will send him a picture of their cups nestled together on the table. He’ll have made a heart of coffee beans. _Are we sixteen again,_ Lucas will think. Standing at his hotel window, he’ll try to find the ocean; he’ll turn toward the Atlantic and send a kiss.

 


	9. It's About Thyme

**_[It’s About Thyme](https://vinepair.com/articles/best-non-alcoholic-cocktail-recipes/) _ **

_3 grapefruits, juiced_  
_¾ ounce fresh lime juice_  
_¾ ounce agave syrup  
__1 sprig thyme, for garnish_  

  1. _Light thyme on fire and catch smoke in a snifter…_



A packet of matches, matte vermillion. The burnt and fragrant head of a match. The small, wet leaves of thyme, deep green against purpling stems. A clear glass bottle of syrup. The shocking yellow-green cross-section of the lime, cut in two. Three plump grapefruits, halved and scraped, pulp clinging here and there to the bone-white piths, stray vesicles scattered across the table like shattered rubies, a gleam of liquid light down the side of the silver snifter, a curl of smoke rising before dark curtains in a dark kitchen. The table looks like the still life of an alchemical process.

And there is only one small singe mark, only one. Discreetly, Eliott tugs a placemat over the burn, and then he slides the little glass toward Lucas, cupped in both palms; he holds it out to Lucas like a goblet.

The drink glows soft and red in its vessel. It’s magic: a potion, a spell, and Lucas is mesmerized. Slowly, he stops typing; he tucks his phone into his back pocket and gives Eliott his full attention, the wide bright stare of his big blue eyes. He accepts the goblet; he drinks.

Eliott watches the wetness gathering at the corners of Lucas’ mouth, the careful swallow, the puckering of his lips.

_Do you know, Lucas, what you’re signing away to me, mouthful by mouthful?_

“What do you think?” he asks, low. “Is it sour?”

“Delicious,” Lucas pronounces, innocent, unaware. He drinks again: a big gulp this time.

Eliott admires the working of his throat, that mole—like a smudge of soot on silk, like a thumbprint above his collarbones, like Eliott’s thumbprint. He reaches out and presses his thumb against it now, feels the sudden shiver of breath in Lucas’ throat, the jump of Lucas’ pulse under his skin. He pulls the goblet from Lucas’ unresisting hands and drains the rest—a burst of bright sweet citrus threaded with smoke—and then he tosses the goblet aside and bends and kisses Lucas, dear enchanted Lucas, slow and deep, with grapefruit on his tongue.

 

* * *

 

**Today, 21:26  
**

**Lucas Lallemant**

Lucille, if I’ve done something recently to upset you, then I sincerely apologize.

 

**21:32**

**You**

?  
No?  
what’s all this about  
?? 

 

**21:33  
**

**Lucas Lallemant**

you told Eliott to set fire to thyme  
Eliott  
fire 

in a bathrobe too and a stupid hat  
the great wizard demaury

 

**21:34  
**

**You**

????????

OH  
The recipe  
it’s a mocktail,  
it’s fine 

Honestly  
Eliott knows how to use matches, you know this 

 

**21:35  
**

**You**

it’s fractions you have to watch out for

 

 _Lucas Lallemant is typing…_  

 

**21:37  
**

**You**

Anyway, was it good?

 

 _Lucas Lallemant is typing…  
_ _Lucas Lallemant is typing…_

 

**23:59  
**

**Lucas Lallemant**

yes


	10. Omelette (Oeufs Brouillés)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Congratulations to [PONI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMV7RlQUbLo), my favorite SKAM France clip of all time, on one million hits!!! Here's a short scene in celebration.

** _~~Omelette~~ Oeufs Brouillés_ **

_3 oeufs_  
_1 bulbe de fenouil, haché  
_ _??? cs. de cannelle_

So happy, so happy. Every soft puff of Lucas’ sleeping breath breathes joy into Eliott’s body. He vibrates. He can’t sleep. He has to get up, he has to celebrate. Create something. But there are no paints in this apartment, save the paint on his warm and happy and excited skin, and on Lucas’—Lucas, dear, beloved, wonderful Lucas! Sleep just a little longer.

In the kitchen he finds the roommates; in the kitchen cabinet, he finds the spices. How pleasing are the roommates with their shared secret smiles; how pleasing are the spices in their little glass jars. There are eggs in the refrigerator, and fennel. Manon likes a shaved fennel salad, he discovers. But Manon is willing to sacrifice her fennel in the name of Lucas’ happiness. _It was wilting, anyway,_ she says. _Go right ahead!_

When Lucas wakes up, Eliott will throw his arms around him. He’ll kiss Lucas full on the mouth. He’ll feed Lucas with a love so heavy and comforting that it will stick to his ribs.


	11. sirop au chocolat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One bottle really doesn’t seem like it’s going to be enough for twelve people and all the ice cream they’ll bring, and two of the same seems boring, so he also buys one of the ones that is supposed to form a little shell after it cools. And then also a strawberry-flavored one, a small bottle only, in case people want more of a Neapolitan contrast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack: [Mika-Ice Cream](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99ii0W0Z5Kw)  
> [L’Imperatrice-Fraise Vanille](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZAqaykiS70&t=133s)  
> I'm bumping up the rating for this one. ;)

One bottle really doesn’t seem like it’s going to be enough for twelve people and all the ice cream they’ll bring, and two of the same seems boring, so he also buys one of the ones that is supposed to form a little shell after it cools. And then also a strawberry-flavored one, a small bottle only, in case people want more of a Neapolitan contrast.

Then Maraschino cherries, adorably round in glass bottles, green as well as red. Whipped cream, but made with coconuts because Lisa texted to remind them for the third time that she will be up all the night on the toilet if she so much as touches lactose.

One box of waffle cones, one box of waffle bowls. Sprinkles, of course sprinkles. Just the normal rainbow ones. He fingers a box of tiny suns and beach balls longingly, but he can already envision Lucas narrowing his eyes in the usual _and how much did you pay for that again_ way.

And then out into the heat, the sun chewing at him with its sharp white teeth. Sometimes Eliott regrets having so much black in his wardrobe.

*

Lucas is already at home, probably grouchy as usual after the summer English intensive that his father is paying for; the shower is on, probably cool as usual because Lucas runs very hot.

The door is a centimeter ajar.

Very hot.

He swallows, remembering the friction of their skin that morning, the tender catch of the head of Lucas’s cock on the skin between his forefinger and thumb, the whining groan of “I’m going to be late” that had been the last coherent sentence he’d allowed out of Lucas’s mouth for the ensuing quarter-hour. A measly quarter-hour, barely enough to get Lucas properly off and certainly not enough to also take care of himself. Then he had to rush off to his appointment with Michel, and then the pharmacy to fill the new prescription, drop off his contract at the gallery where he’ll begin working next week, and then his parents had wanted to have a late lunch, and then he’d stopped at the market for the things for the party.

And now here he is at four p.m., his T-shirt stuck to his entire back by sweat, popping a ridiculous boner against his own bathroom door.

He nudges the door open, careful not to let it squeak.

*

“Fuck. _Fuck_ ,” Lucas says, pulling free, face red, chin wet, eyes unspeakably blue. He has the look of the Devil as he tightens his fist around Eliott, who bucks helplessly against the tiles, toes digging into the foam of the bath mat. “Fuck. I should leave you like this.”

“No—no,” he replies, wriggling his hips, trying to coax Lucas’s mouth back into place. He pushes his wrists against the washcloth that binds them, but only halfheartedly and only enough to hear his knuckles bump gently against the wall; the sound of his own struggle sends a scratch of lightning down his neck.

Lucas lowers his eyelids. “Imagine.” He lifts his free hand to his tongue and licks at the shiny, sloppy coat of chocolate on his fingers until it runs liquid again down his wrist and forearm, gathering thickly in the fold of his elbow. “Everyone showing up. Me saying hello. You stuck in here, all alone.”

He doesn’t trust himself to speak, so he just turns his head and presses his flaming cheek to the mercifully cool tile. “All alone,” Lucas bites the light curve of muscle above his knee, then licks, in an unbroken line, all the way to the tender seam between his hipbone and the very root of his thigh. Rising, Lucas lets his mouth hang open; the tongue he shows Eliott is dark with chocolate, and his teeth are deadly sweet. “All alone and completely filthy.”

Lucas lapses into a brief silence as he laps at Eliott’s neck, collarbones, and chin, where the skin stiffens under streaked syrup. Then: “aren’t you going to say something?”

“Hnnm,” Eliott gasps in reply. His mouth has fallen ajar. His eyes do not blink. He is so close, so close, that if he can just contract his thighs enough, if Lucas will just suck a little harder, maybe brush against a nipple, he might be able to—

“I bet you’d like revenge. Thinking about how I’d look in pink, hein?” With a bare foot, Lucas nudges the strawberry syrup, still sealed, lying docilely on its side on the floor. “Maybe you’ll put some sprinkles on me too?” He presses himself against Eliott with a squelch. “But you shouldn’t, no.”

“For party,” Eliott manages. “Party.”

“Yeah. We gotta save it. But imagine, _imagine_ ,” Lucas drops suddenly again to his knees. He smiles upward, a chocolate-smeared cherub, his hand again fastening around Eliott. “How _goddamn_ hard it would be to hold on to me with all that syrup on me, when you’re fucking me on the floor.” With a yelp of surprise, the cherub shuts his eyes as Eliott, staggering, a breaking chain of unintelligible noises pouring from his mouth, begins to come. 

*

“You’re looking very well,” says Manon, smiling at him over her waffle bowl and two scoops of vanilla drizzled liberally with both syrups.

“Thanks,” he replies, carefully balancing a green Maraschino atop his cone of raspberry and mango sorbet, Lisa’s surprisingly tasty contribution. “And you too. Also Charles, too bad he had to run. Is the studio going to be big enough?”

“Bah, it’s fine for now.” Manon’s eyes slide right, then left. No one is near; Lucas and the boys are laughing uproariously over their brownie Häagen-Dazs near the window; Chloé and Daphné are Instagramming their creations, with Mika and Lisa looking on. Imane, Idriss, and Alexia are yet to arrive. She nudges his hand with the end of her spoon. “Did another Jackson Pollock today, did we?” At his look of incomprehension, she giggles and taps her right ear.

With a sinking feeling, he imitates her.

Something sticky has trickled out of his ear and slid down his neck. His fingertips come away warm and dappled with chocolate.


	12. Pétales de Rose Cristallisés

_** Pétales de Rose Cristallisés ** _

_1 ou 2 roses rouges ou roses_  
_1 blanc d'œuf  
_ _250 g de sucre cristal_

The bouquet is red and full and heavy, still glistening a bit inside its plastic sheaf; the florist spritzed them for him. _A little something for the journey_ , she said, and, _They’ll open up over the next few days, aren’t they lovely?_

A good choice, a lucky lady. He gave a halfhearted smile at that, slid the bills across the counter.

The airport is dead. Another flight from America arrives—not Lucas’, not yet—and tourists stagger forth into the summer evening in billowing sweatshirts, their rolling cases clattering after them. Eliott leans against the wall and goes back to his recipe.

The blogger on his phone has chosen pink roses for their candied petals. Step one, they write: gather your ingredients. Roses, egg white, sugar.

Step two: pluck the petals. A real smile this time, small and quiet, directed at his screen, but at Lucas too, the Lucas somewhere above him, floating in the air, the Lucas who texted a string of hearts at two in the afternoon. And then, thirty minutes later, a series of blank mouthless faces. _We’re delayed…_

He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me…

It was almost fun, the first couple of days. Oh, of course, he moped that first evening, slumped about the apartment, sighed at everything and especially at the absence of Lucas on the couch, in their bed, an absence so palpable it might as well have been outlined in chalk. He had lunch with Idriss; he went out dancing with Le Gang; they sent Lucas pictures and posted stories on Instagram. He walked, by himself, along the Seine, and he comforted his lonely hand by nestling it carefully in his pocket. In the first week alone, he called Lucas four times and Lucas called him twice as much, and they had sex once, on the phone, even though it was embarrassing, and Eliott came too quickly with Lucas purring in his ear.

One day, maybe it was Wednesday, it had been nice to repeat the same song twenty times on the record player while he painted, to fill the evening with the same frenetic electric beat, circling, circling. Lucas would have hated that; Lucas would have swapped out the disc for something terribly old-fashioned. Guns and Roses.

Roses, yes. He’ll wait a few days before he candies these. Let them bloom and open and spread wide and red in the June sunlight. Then pluck them.

It makes him sad to see the flowers wilting on the countertop; he can’t stand it. Imane has suggested composting, of course, but that makes him sad, too. He selected these roses for their huge dark petals, with candying in mind.

Step three—

“Hey,” Lucas says, “I thought I told you not to come pick me up. It’s late.”

“Lucas!”

His heart jumps. He nearly drops the phone in his hurry to put it away. There he is, his darling, with reddened eyes and wild hair and his thoroughly unprofessional duffel bag slung over one rumpled shoulder of his suit. And his mouth tastes like peppermint. With the tip of his tongue, Eliott finds the hastily chewed wad of gum tucked away in the corner of Lucas’ cheek, and then he withdraws, smiling.

“Gross,” Lucas complains, smiling too. “Hi,” he says.

“Hi.” Eliott kisses him again and again and again. “You snuck up on me,” he accuses. “You weren’t delayed at all.”

“I think the pilot broke the laws of physics,” Lucas says. “To get us here when she did.”

“Americans.”

“I flew Air France, silly.” Lucas’ eyes are shining. He brushes Eliott’s hand. “Are those for me?”

“Fuck,” Eliott says. They’re hanging there in his fist, long forgotten, upside-down, dripping onto the linoleum. “Yeah, they are, sorry. Here.”

He presents the bouquet with a flourish. Lucas laughs.

They take a taxi home. The company is paying for it, after all, Lucas says, somewhat darkly. It was a long trip and not all that productive, and he won’t let them send him again, fuck. And it’s good to be home. The bouquet is in his lap; he fiddles with it, absently. He’s sitting too far away to lean his head on Eliott’s shoulder. They clasp hands across the middle seat.

The driver has his eyes on the road. Eliott caresses the dip between Lucas’ thumb and index finger and drinks in his smile, and he bites his lip as Lucas lets go, briefly, to run his hand down Eliott’s thigh, gripping it just above the kneecap.

Lucas takes his hand again. “What were you looking at, anyway? Earlier.”

He finds his phone and shows Lucas the recipe. “We can pluck them together,” he says. “The petals.”

Lucas snorts.

“Darling, we can’t,” he says. “Not with these. They’re chemically treated, these roses. With pesticides and fertilizers and all kinds of toxic shit. It isn’t safe to eat them. See?” He taps the screen. “Non-treated petals only, it says.”

“Oh,” Eliott says. “Oh.”

He turns and looks at the lights of Paris flashing by. So much for his beautiful idea. Their roses will wilt on the counter, covered in invisible toxic shit.

Lucas squeezes his hand. “Hey,” he says, soft, and he smiles a bit as Eliott turns to him, “don’t pout.”

He pouts anyway, deliberately, with an exaggerated jutting of his lower lip, until he can’t hold his grin back any longer, until it bursts out upon them, wide and almost stupid with delight. He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me, he…

“We still have some oranges, don’t we?” Lucas murmurs. “We can candy the peels instead. How about it?”

 


	13. cornichons chanceux

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucas smells them before he even opens their door.  
> Before he even reaches their landing.  
> As soon as he pulled the always-sticky building door open, in fact.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written long ago, but forgotten till @zetaophiuchi reminded me to post (which seems ironically appropriate)!

_ quelques concombres miniatures _

_ un été trop chaud  _

_ une alarme que tu avais pas entendue _

_ une conférence d'art numérique avancé qui pouvait pas être sautée _

 

Lucas smells them before he even opens their door. Before he even reaches their landing. As soon as he pulled the always-sticky building door open, in fact. 

It probably isn’t anything too serious: no fire alarms shrilling, no neighbors poking their heads into the stairwell and shouting at him with their noses held, no frantic texts and voicemails clogging his phone’s lock screen. But he still takes the stairs two at a time. Sweat beads on his neck and lip as he turns the key; the walk from the Métro station has already dampened the back of his shirt, under his backpack. 

“Hi?” No loud clanks or hisses from the kitchen, another good sign, but the smell has intensified, hanging in a sour cloud over the muggy little entryway as he shucks off his shoes and drops his pack. 

“Oh,  _ hérisson _ !” Eliott is making a familiar face: a base of guilt with a hearty layer of mollifying charm, a generous sprinkle of giggles on top. It helps that he is without a shirt and of a sweatiness comparable to Lucas’s. “You’re back early.” He is braced by thin arms in the doorway of the kitchen; the head, crowned as usual by light-brown chaos, is dipped to give Lucas a nipping kiss.

“What happened?” Lucas tries to look into the kitchen, but Eliott throws an arm around him and squeezes him tight so that his chin is pressed into a nipple. “Come on. I could smell it all the way downstairs.”

“I think you mean,  _ what magic did you work today _ ,  _ mon amour _ ?”

He rolls his eyes, pulling away to reply. Eliott draws back at the same time, dancing a little as he steps toward a counter, and so Lucas sees him plunge a hand into the slightly cloudy liquid filing their biggest mixing bowl, in which swim many small, pale discs of something. He extracts one, shaking it off, then holds it aloft like a medal. “Behold!”

“And what am I beholding?” Lucas wrinkles his nose. “Wait, were those the cucumbers you were going to put aside for the picnic on Saturday?”

“Nay, prithee regard closely. They are mere cucumbers no longer, thanks to my miraculous alchemy. My alchemy and the sun’s sweet flame.” Eliott pushes his hand toward Lucas, still dancing. “Do try one, good sir.”

“Wait—” but Eliott takes this opening to pop the disc into Lucas’s mouth. Reflexively, he begins to spit it out, until, as though a lens were coming into sudden focus, the acrid haze resolves, proving all along to have been a perfect little triangle of sweet and sour and salty savor, sitting like a crystal on his tongue.

He crunches, blinking. 

“What good luck, mm?” Eliott stuffs a stack of the slices into his own mouth at once. “Accidental pickles!” He laughs, once he’s done chewing, and stoops for another kiss.

Lucas swallows. “Lucky. Lucky pickles.” He presses himself against Eliott so that they stick together slightly. “You know they could still kill us, right?”

“There could be worse times than now to go,” Eliott says. Lucas finds it hard to disagree.


	14. Liste de courses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In honor of both Father's Day and Pride Month: the inevitable (?) Elu kidfic.
> 
> *  
> Yet: it’s been so fucking busy this week. Both of them falling into bed each night practically already snoring.
> 
> But the workshop is set and Eliott got the track lights mounted properly after all and the misspelling on one of the placards corrected. Now it’s just a matter of his surviving Auchan at the most stupidly crowded hour before it’s the weekend.

He unfolds the already badly crumpled slip of paper, noting that it’s actually the receipt from his previous visit to this gargantuan Auchan two stops away from work. On the blank side are a dozen entries, scrawled by Eliott over the last two weeks with writing utensils in an assortment of colors.

_les barres d’avoine avec l_ _es petits poissons sur la boîte_

_(les poissons sont très importante, ne les oublie plus, hérisson!!!)_

He snorts to himself, hesitating for a moment before the banks of carts and stacks of baskets, then selects a cart. He can hear Maxe’s whine of _please Papa please I want the fishies_ as though she were sitting there before him in the little elevated seat, trying to clip her own seat belt while kicking her dangling feet.

The breakfast section at this Auchan is the closest to the entrance, for whatever reason, and he scans the shelves for the big blue box. They’ve moved the snack bars in question to the bottom rack, he discovers after several increasingly alarmed minutes; he throws three boxes into the cart, just to be safe.

_huile d’avocat_

_avocats (3 si sont grandes, ou 4 sinon)_

_cette glace d’avocat q’on voit en la panneau de publicité Samedi_

He’s not really sure whether to continue encouraging Eliott’s recent avocado frenzy, but the avocado ice cream _had_ looked pretty appealing that broiling weekend, glistening at them from the screen as they waited, Maxe asleep in her stroller, for the delayed train back into town from his mother’s new little apartment out in Saint-Cloud. Even with the heat wave past, it’s still hot enough out for guacamole. The four avocados roll around the cart until he corners them with the carton of ice cream. He sees Eliott’s eyes sparkling: _my champion, returned triumphant from his raid_. Eliott stabbing his favorite tiny teaspoon into the cool smooth surface of the ice cream. Eliott’s tongue teasingly swiping at the soft curl of green.

Get a grip, he thinks at himself.

Yet: it’s been so fucking busy this week. Maxe with that nagging cough. Him left with organizing the damn annual workshop yet again, and Eliott scrambling before his show opens next month. Both of them falling into bed each night practically already snoring.

But the workshop is set and Eliott got the track lights mounted properly after all and the misspelling on one of the placards corrected. Now it’s just a matter of his surviving Auchan at the most stupidly crowded hour before it’s the weekend. The weekend: slow fucking followed by rolling around all morning in bed, then nuzzling each other over slowly sipped coffee until Maxe demands that they stop their yucky kissing and come witness her newest architectural masterpiece or her monster truck sparring with her stuffed racoon. Since this Sunday, unlike last, is supposed to be sunny, they might go to the park and get a few kisses in while Maxe is busy flinging crumbs at the geese.

He sighs, turning into the produce section just as the misting nozzles come on. If Maxe were here she’d beg to put her hand under the rain, and if Eliott were here too, she’d get to do it. He carefully steers himself out of the way of a pack of teenagers cackling as they weave their cart, with one of their friends in it, at an impressive velocity around the sluggish adult hordes.

_petites patates douces violets de Corée_

He finds only two sacks of the little purple Korean sweet potatoes left and puts them both into the cart. Maxe does love her carbohydrates. More importantly, if there’s purple on her plate, it’s much easier to cajole her into eating the green things as well.

 _sauce à l’aïl frais, qu’a_ _le symbole de cochon_ _sur le couvercle_

_safran_

He gets a biggish bottle of the sauce. He’d thought the paella Eliott had made on Wednesday with the pigless brand obtainable at the much quieter, if much smaller, Lidl near home was just fine, but clearly he was alone in that opinion.

_cresson_

_carottes violettes_

_céleri-rave_

_bette arc-en-ciel_

He loads these one by one into the cart, trying not to sigh too loudly as he jostles among the other bleary-eyed shoppers. The first bunches of chard he finds are rather droopy. As he tries to select a perkier bundle, a sweet-faced woman about his mother’s age, rummaging in the bin of loose Cremini mushrooms next to him, smiles at him. “Big family?”

“Picky family,” he replies with a shake of his head.

“Mm. Nice of you to come shopping when it’s this crazy,” she smiles wider. “Your wife’s a lucky one.”

“Uh—” Fifteen years and three months and five days they’ve been together, five years and three months and five days married, and still he gets kind of weird when this kind of thing inevitably happens. He looks down at his work I.D. badge, still pinned on the breast pocket of his shirt. In one corner is the usual little rainbow sticker for June. Now that elderly Martin is finally also wearing one, all the other lab managers are doing it too.

“How old are the kids?” The woman doesn’t seem to have noticed his look. “I’ve got a six-year-old grandson who _loves_ those bars.”

“One kid. Turned three last month.”

“That’s so cute.” She nods conspiratorially at him as she ties off her bag of mushrooms and puts them into her basket. “Perfect timing to try for number two, you know. Trust me, that’s the ideal amount of spacing. My daughter-in-law—”

“My husband.” He clears his throat, says it more firmly. Maybe too firmly. “ _He’s my husband_.”

“Oh! Well, how nice!” Her smile seems even brighter. “You know, my niece and her _wife—_ ”

“Call from _moooon meeeeec_ ,” chirps his phone; he’d forgotten to turn on his wireless receiver after making a call earlier from the lab. For some reason the damn thing always reads the tildes in a funny gargle. He smiles awkwardly at the woman, who beams at him, waves, and jauntily moves toward the cashiers. After parking his cart before a majestic wall of brioches, he nods twice to activate his receiver. “Hi?”

“Hérisson,” Eliott says, low, urgent, “Get one of those grape juices with the purple hippos, too.”

“What? Why? I thought we weren’t—” He takes the opportunity of Eliott’s hesitation to place the final entry on the list, a loaf of _levain de San Francisco,_ carefully into the cart. Its paper bag rustles pleasantly. “I thought we decided forty-five grams of sugar is insane to feed her at any time of day?”

In the background, Maxence begins screeching: _Papaaaaaa_ is all he can make out.

“I just got some new acrylics shipped by mistake to the apartment,” Eliott continues, raising his voice a little as Maxe’s _Papaaaaaa_ crescendoes. His cringe is nearly audible. “Spilled. Now those fairy cowgirl boots your mother just gave her are yellow ochre as well as purple. Shh, darling, Papa’s very sorry. Papa’ll paint them again, with a nice—oh no, no, shh.”

“ _Chéri_ , you have _got_ to—” he U-turns the cart toward the beverage aisle, rolling his eyes while trying not to laugh aloud—”stop bribing her with sugar.”

A chuckle, slightly sly. It’s what he thinks of as Eliott’s _voix de Vendredi_. “I figure it’d make an okay mixer, too, no? With a little vodka? Maybe I can serve it at the opening. A unique punch.”

He should know better to hide a laugh from Eliott; it comes out, now, so loudly that a couple pondering the tomato juices jumps and stares. He drops into a crouch to reach for a jug of the purple hippos. “They’ll love it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maxence is actually a gender-neutral first name in French (used to render both the Latin names Maxentius and Maxentia), though most people named Maxence since the 70s are male. 
> 
> Am I being devious? Yes. ;)


	15. Recette du Cake Rainbow ou Gâteau Arc en Ciel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy birthday, Eliott!
> 
> I've been in a bit of a slump and writing this was like pulling teeth, but I had to do something to celebrate the birthday of our favorite starchild! Here's the Lomepal song Lucas listens to: [Le vrai moi](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOIJ9P9mUF0).

_** Recette du Cake Rainbow ou Gâteau Arc en Ciel ** _

_ Pour les génoises _

_6 oeufs_  
_400 g de sucre_  
_400 g de farine_  
_200 g de beurre fondu_  
_1 sachet de levure chimique_  
_1 sachet de sucre vanillé_  
_1 cc. de bicarbonate_  
_20 cl de crème liquide entière_  
_10 cl de lait  
_ _6 colorants alimentaires en poudre : rouge, orange, jaune, vert, bleu et violet_

_ Pour la chantilly au mascarpone… _

The recipe is longer than Lucas’ arm, but he has it memorized. It occupies as much space in his head as the themes of _Madame Bovary_ ; he could recite it in his sleep, and perhaps he does.

Manon supervises the first attempt at the coloc, laughing over her coffee as Lucas juggles their two oddly-sized trays and burns layer after layer, swearing as both red and green emerge from the oven brown and hard at the corners. When the yellow layer arrives with a charred perimeter crumbling around a liquid center, he nearly howls in frustration. By then, it is 16:25, and he has to scramble to scrape it all into the garbage and wipe down the counters. Manon intercepts Eliott at the door and runs interference in the living room, talking about this and that, and when Eliott finally shuffles into the kitchen at 16:54, Lucas is seated with a cup of tea, flipping rapidly through a magazine as though it holds all the secrets to the universe and is on the verge of dematerializing.

“Ah, upside-down reading,” Eliott says, and Lucas winces and blushes and slides the magazine away. “Is something burning?”

“It’s called looking at things with a new perspective,” he says haughtily. “And yes, Mika burned some muffins. Ah, no, they were inedible, we threw them away,” he adds, hastily now, because Eliott is peering at the countertop, where Lucas has left the food coloring and vanilla sugar sitting in plain sight. “How was it?”

Eliott looks pale and tired, his shoulders slumped. He brings his fingers to his mouth and gnaws at the side of a fingernail. “Fine, I guess,” he says. “I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about it.”

Lucas makes another cup of tea and ushers Eliott into the living room, where Lisa ignores every meaningful roll of Mika’s eyes and trounces them all at Scrabble. They start a round of Mundus Novus, but Eliott’s heart isn’t in it. He discards his resources, abandons his fleet, kisses Lucas on the ear and the mouth, and closes the door to a chorus of well wishes. Lucas hunches over his phone, frowning and typing and retyping encouraging messages until Mika reaches over and confiscates it.

“Concentrate,” Mika hisses, “can’t you see Lisa’s building an armada?”

“But,” Lucas says, and then he sighs and nods and returns his attention to his resource cards.

The second attempt takes place the next day, at Basile’s house in Vanves. The dreaded mathematics exam is tomorrow, and Eliott—now replying to Lucas’ texts with solitary emojis—will be spending the night at his own home; he won’t see the results of Lucas’ labor until Friday night at the earliest. That’s okay: Lucas has considered all the logistics of transporting a towering, six-layer cake across Paris at rush hour, up to and including fantasies of heroic dives under the swinging arms of blundering tourists. But even with the supervision of Basile’s mother and three very good, heavy springform pans, the cake fails. It oozes over the top of the pans and burns into a black crust at the bottom of the oven.

Basile’s mother laughs and refuses to let him do any of the dishes, and he and Basile leave her making animals from suds in the sink and scoot to the Lidl to replace the wasted flour.

“Just get him something from the bakery section,” Basile says. “Look, that one with the flower, that’s _hyper_ nice.”

“I can’t just get him something from the fucking _bakery_ section.”

“Why not?”

“Because—”

He dissolves into garbled mumbling. _Because Eliott hides notes in my books, my backpack, my pockets. Because he makes me breakfast, even though it’s poison half the time. Because I want his birthday cake to be just as bright and beautiful as his smile, and I want to make it myself. Myself, my hands. For him._ _I’d make it one hundred layers if I could, as tall as the fucking Eiffel Tower. Visible from space. More colors than we used in the foyer. More colors than a paint catalogue._

He kicks at the base of the cake display and glowers at the neon lumps of fondant.

“Because,” he repeats, and mutters something about monuments to love.

“Ah, yes,” Basile says, nodding sagely. He buys himself a cookie decorated like a tennis ball.

The third attempt is a failure. He doesn’t have time to try again over the weekend—in fact, he barely thinks about the recipe, or _Madame Bovary_ , or any part of the French canon. Occasionally he murmurs something about eating or going outside or keeping the noise down, and Eliott pulls a face and replies  _No_ or _This is payback for Scrabble, Lisa was pitiless and therefore deserves no pity_ , and once, with a smile on his face that shows he knows exactly what he’s doing, _I owe you at least another 1,573 minutes._

 _I thought you were done with math_ , Lucas says, but he puts his arms around Eliott’s neck anyway and gleefully accepts what he is owed.

So it is that at 13:30 on Monday, standing over two bowls of plain white batter and an empty bag of flour, he finds himself shouting at Basile on Whatsapp. “Cake flour, Basile, I need cake flour, regular flour is too coarse.”

 _Bro,_ Yann says. _Have you tried another recipe? This one is clearly shit._

“Fine, yeah, sure, I should have, but I don’t have time to experiment anymore!” His hands are covered in butter and sugar; only his thumb is clean, and he jabs it brutally down on the microphone icon. “He’ll be here in three hours! Maybe sooner!” Today is the elective exam, art history, and Eliott hadn’t been worried about it at all; he’d trotted off whistling on Sunday after bestowing six kisses on Lucas on his doorstep and bounding back for a seventh. He’ll be here any moment, Lucas thinks, grinning and giggling and utterly, absolutely free, and he’ll find Lucas standing uselessly in the kitchen battered up to his elbows.

 _Tell Eliott not to come over, make the cake tonight, and give it to him tomorrow on his actual birthday,_ Basile says. _Problem solved, bam._

“I can’t do that, he’s going out with his parents tomorrow,” Lucas snaps.

 _Okay, but why is it me who has to go?_ Basile says. _Ask Arthur! Ask Yann!_

 _Sure, I’ll send some flour from Calais_ , Yann says. _It’ll be there in, oh, three to five business days._

 _What is Arthur doing anyway,_ Basile complains. _Arthur! Hey! Fuck it, I’m going to call him._

“Don’t call him, just go to the fucking Carrefour,” Lucas says. “Come on, Baz! Please!”

Basile switches to voice messaging too. “Lucas, fuck, why didn’t you go yesterday? Or the day—”

“Of course we’ll get the flour, Lucas, we’re on it,” Daphné interjects, “don’t worry, absolutely don’t worry.”

“—the day before,” Basile says. “Aw, Daph, really? I thought we were gonna…”

“It’s Lucas’ first Pride Cake, of course we have to—”

“It’s not a _Pride_ cake,” Basile protests. “It’s not for _Pride_. It’s for Eliott, it—”

“ _B’en_ , all the more reason,” Daphné says. “Seriously, Basile, I can’t believe you’d be so—”

The message cuts off. Basile types for a while, and then he says, defeated, _Okay, we’re going to the supermarket, see you in 45 minutes._

“Forty-five?” Lucas screeches.

“Take it or leave it,” Basile screeches back, “it’s date night for more than just you and Eliott! Have a little consideration! Have some—ouch! Daphné!”

 _Hey_ , Arthur says. _I absolutely don’t mean to trivialize this, I see it’s a crisis, but what if you made cupcakes instead? Just put the colors in now and swirl it up. You have a cupcake tin, don’t you? Muffin, whatever._

Lucas blinks. Cupcakes, he thinks, cupcakes, right. He has more than enough batter for cupcakes. He takes a deep breath.

“Yeah,” he says. “Manon has one, yeah.”

 _Great, don’t overmix the colors and you’ll be fine. It’s a standard tin, right? 175 C, 15-20 minutes, stick a toothpick in to make sure they’re done. Don’t even think about frosting them until they’ve cooled._

_What’s this_ , Yann says. _Are you a baker now?_

 _No, but I dated a pair of pastry chefs once. It was eclairs every morning and macarons at night. They were sweet on me, you could say._

_Oh, the bastard,_ Yann says.

“Are we good?” Basile demands. “Are we good for the flour? You don’t need it anymore?”

Lucas washes his hands. _Yeah,_ he types. _Yeah, sorry. Tell Daphné sorry too. Enjoy your date._

He makes the cupcakes as instructed—175 degrees, eighteen minutes, clean at the center when toothpicked. He cools them in the tin on the stovetop, then realizes he’s forgotten to use any cupcake liners. He has to ease them from the tin with a butter knife, cursing and praying under his breath.

Of the twenty-four he makes, twenty survive intact, tender and moist and fragile. He holds his breath as he transfers them to a tray.

He whips up the mascarpone Chantilly cream, humming along to some Lomepal to cover his anxiety—he’s never gotten this far in the recipe before, and his hands are actually shaking—and frosts the cupcakes. They’re still too warm, and the icing begins to melt and slide, but he piles it on with determination until each cupcake begins to resemble the head of Marie Antoinette: powdered, bewigged, extravagant.

He eats one of these heads to make sure it’s edible (it is, and it’s soft and warm and suffused with vanilla and bright eddies and spirals of rainbow color, and he sighs after he swallows) and slides the remaining nineteen into the refrigerator.

Barefoot on the tile with the sun slanting in through the window and Lomepal mumbling in the background, Lucas licks the excess cream from his fingers and thinks about kissing Eliott with this mouth, with this sugar on his tongue. _Tout est tellement joli près de toi, pourvu que les grains du sablier coincent_.

The clock reads 14:32, and suddenly Eliott can’t get here soon enough.

 _I love you_ , Lucas will say. _Happy birthday._ And he’ll dab frosting on Eliott’s nose.

 


	16. Gâteau à la Vanille (Le Meilleur)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy birthday, Lucas Lallemant!
> 
> As usual, I continue to work out my anxieties in writing. And I seem to have forgotten how tenses work in English. 
> 
> In any case, happy birthday to our choupisson. I hope it's a good one!

_**Gâteau à la Vanille ([Le Meilleur](https://www.ricardocuisine.com/recettes/5165-gateau-a-la-vanille-le-meilleur-))** _

_450 g (3 tasses) de farine tout usage non blanchie_  
_15 ml (1 c. à soupe) de poudre à pâte_  
_2,5 ml (½ c. à thé) de sel_  
_4 oeufs_  
_420 g (2 tasses) de sucre_  
_15 ml (1 c. à soupe) d’extrait de vanille_  
_180 ml (¾ tasse) d’huile de canola_  
_310 ml (1 ¼ tasse) de lait_

It’s always serious when Eliott breaks out the food scale. He and Lucas have two: the rickety, rusted, spring-loaded antique Eliott scooped up at a flea market—he still remembers the moment he spotted it, squat and orange, pumpkin-like beside a stack of vintage postcards, and how he tugged at Lucas’ arm, God, it must have been nearly ten years ago—and the silver, space-age Beurer KS 51, itself a recent birthday present, which looks as though it will someday dematerialize from the kitchen counter and take its rightful place amid the sleek low-profile electronics of a certain minimalist computer store.

Lucas had banished the antique to the back of the cabinet as soon as they brought it home from the market, declaring it unfit for food preparation. _Look at it, it’s probably coated in lead, it’s deadly. Come to think of it, it might be_ made _of lead; it’s heavy enough to be a murder weapon, fuck._

Eliott had rescued the scale from exile with a pleading stare and a quivering lip, but after an extended trial period, he’d had to admit the thing was, at best, useless and, at worst, malevolent. It had sabotaged entire patisseries’ worth of madeleines, gougères, and financiers. Its wobbly measurements had caused the destruction of literally hundreds of macarons (the summer of 2024). The collapse of the croquembouche tower (Lucas’ twenty-third birthday), the disintegration of a pannier of palmiers (Lucas’ twenty-fourth birthday), and the tearing of twenty-five tuiles (Lucas’ twenty-fifth birthday)—all these were disasters that could be laid at the rusted feet of Eliott’s flea market treasure.

Or at the feet of Eliott, who was never very good with fractions. 

These days, he just grins when Lucas teases him about it. _I measure things with my heart_ , he says.

 _An approach that works well for paint_ , Lucas always says in reply, and Eliott either kisses him to shut him up or pops a morsel of whatever it is he’s cooking into Lucas’ mouth, at which point Lucas usually concedes that measurements of the heart (and six weeks of lessons at L’Atelier des Chefs, another birthday present) are also suitable for the kitchen.

Currently, Eliott is measuring with both his heart and his Beurer KS 51. This recipe for gâteau à la vanille is indeed the best, but it is also the most unforgiving. Luckily, the Beurer measures grams down to three decimal places; it is so sensitive it could detect the weight of a feather, Eliott thinks, or even a soul. 

Over _time_ , however, he and his Beurer have less control. The recipe requires ten minutes for the eggs to combine with the sugar and butter, but sometimes it takes eleven minutes, or nine. Fifty to fifty-five minutes in the oven, claims the recipe, but sometimes it takes longer. Let rest for fifteen minutes, the recipe says, but sometimes Eliott can’t wait, or sometimes he forgets. After all, he has made this cake for a number of occasions, some special, some banal: an anniversary celebration, a movie night, a game night with Le Gang, and at least six birthdays, his and Lucas’ and their friends’, and once just because Lucas was craving it.

Yes, time…. As he stirs the wet and dry ingredients together, scrapes the batter into two pans, and checks his email while the oven works its magic, he broods on the passage of time. Minute by minute, the years have slipped by, important moments have joined a kaleidoscope of memories; there is a new faint line near his mouth that deepens when he smiles and lingers after he stops.

He feels greedy, sometimes frightened. He often tells his psychiatrist that it doesn’t feel like enough, the coming fifty or, if he’s lucky, sixty years with Lucas. He wants seventy; he wants one hundred. 

When Lucas’ hair shone briefly silver in the cold winter light six months ago, he panicked at the thought that he and his man were starting to go gray. As Lucas stepped back into the shadows to claim his breakfast, his hair became dark again; his grin was playful, his skin smooth and youthful still, but all the same, Eliott lost his appetite, slept poorly, and hid the reason for his dark circles from Lucas, blaming the bad behavior of a client instead.

Michel (his gray-haired psychiatrist of many years) did not have answers, of course, merely suggestions, grounding techniques. It was Lucas who murmured—the next morning, when he found Eliott slumped over his coffee and drew the tremulous answer out of him, that he, Eliott, was white-faced at the thought of white hair and death—that across the many universes, infinite Lucases and Eliotts would live infinite lives together.

 _Of course_ , Lucas also said, _in some of these universes we drowned at twenty._

 _Putain, Lucas_ , he said.

_And maybe, in a few other universes, we are immortal. And in some of those we'll burn up due to the eventual heat-death of the universe._

_I hate you,_ he groaned, but he lifted his head and smiled.

 _I love you,_ Lucas replied evenly, _and I agree, it’s not enough, I’m greedy too._ Then he kissed Eliott on the forehead and cheek and mouth. _I’ll come home early if I can._

Another year, another birthday, another present. As the two layers of cake cool, Eliott thinks about the future—not the agony of living on alone or the anguish of dying too soon, not the specter of a painful prolonged death, not even the science fiction of a slow withering in the dull light of dying stars, culminating in fiery extinguishment. 

He thinks about a future more immediate and real. He thinks about the warm gloom of a cloudy summer evening in Paris, about the LP rotating slowly in the background—nothing too crazy, no electronica, just a compilation of old love songs—and about Lucas’ tread on the doorstep, the clatter of Lucas’ keys and bag on the counter and his sigh, half relieved, half rueful, as he begins to loosen his tie.

He thinks about the blowing out of candles and the cutting and eating of the cake, the brightening of Lucas’ eyes as he looks at Eliott across the table and the softening of his smile.

He thinks about the little velvet box concealed in the cabinet behind the springs of the antique scale, about the ring nestled within, about Lucas’ hands in his, intertwined.

 


	17. Champignons en Meringue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some notes:
> 
>   * I have made these meringue mushrooms before; they are lots of fun.
>   * Eliott's papillote doodles are inspired by the wonderful [Bubblebulle](https://mabubblebulle.tumblr.com/post/189759557612/eliotts-list-according-to-eluincorrectquotes-is) on Tumblr.
>   * So are you to my thoughts...is set in the same universe as [Così fan tutte](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20417942/chapters/48435641), my 75 Dates in the SKAM Universe Chlocille fic (of which I am very proud, please read it, thank you) where Lucille and the Demaury family have dinner together nearly every Sunday.
> 

> 
> Apologies if I have butchered the various French Noël traditions; I am but a humble (and hasty) New World Googler. Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it, and see you in the New Year! V. excited for our imminent destruction by S5.

[ **_ Champignons en Meringue _ ** ](http://www.fashioncooking.fr/2016/12/champignons-en-meringue/)

_60g de blancs d’œufs  
_ _60g de sucre  
_ _60g de sucre glace_  
_du cacao en poudre  
_ _50g de chocolat noir à pâtisser_

He shrieks a bit when Lucas lifts the mixing bowl over his head and turns it upside-down. _Ah, Lucas, no; Lucas, my hair, wait_. But the egg whites, beaten into clouds and peaks, cling tightly to the blue edges.

“Success,” Lucas crows. “You see? Nothing to worry about.”

“I’ll tell Lucille you said that,” Eliott says, “when she’s picking strands of my hair out from between her teeth.” He touches the top of his head gingerly, patting at the tufts and tips, but his palm comes away clean.

“I’m sure she’s done that before,” Lucas says, with a wicked twinkle. And at Eliott’s blank stare, he repeats, with a knowing look downward, “Your hair, her teeth.”

He’s shocked. “ _Lu_ cas.”

Then he smiles. He keeps smiling as he helps Lucas clump sticky spoonfuls of meringue into a plastic piping bag, grinning down at their busy hands and the glossy white smear across his knuckles. A year ago, two years ago, he thinks, Lucas would never have made that kind of joke. A year ago the mere mention of Lucille would have been enough to send Lucas into a quiet spiral, of jealousy, of insecurity, of one hundred small and slithery emotions that he would try not to let Eliott see, turning his face to the window or his phone.

It helps, of course, that Lucille has clearly moved on, that Eliott’s parents will be extending their dining table tomorrow to make space for Chloé at the Réveillon.

And for his Aunts Jacqueline and Alyce, and his uncles by marriage and by blood, Tomasz, Tahar, and Timo, and his cousin Arnaud, and his parents’ new neighbor Michel, the Paris IX student who can’t go home for Christmas, and all of their partners and children. Eliott’s backpack is already bulging with chocolates and papillotes, ready to be stuffed into little boots and tennis shoes.

Lucas retrieves the baking sheet. Eliott washes his hands and leans against the counter and drinks his wine.

He hopes his parents won’t seat him near Chloé. They've done so before, one Sunday dinner after another, made Eliott rub elbows uncomfortably with a woman he's pretty sure has fantasized about throwing wine in his face. Or beer—it was beer they were drinking the night he and Lucas ditched them. And now she sits on his left once or twice a month and smiles sweetly as she passes the asparagus or mushrooms or escarole and tickles Lucille's ankles beneath the table.

Sometimes he thinks his father wants him to squirm, that Paul Demaury and Chloé Farge Jeanson are united in their belief that he was let off too easily in the Matter of Lucille. (That’s what his father called it once, stentoriously, like an eighteenth-century pamphleteer: The Adventure of the Péniche, or the Matter of Lucille.) His mother just smiles and says, _Isn't it great that it's all worked out? And Chloé's such a nice girl, too._

He says, sighing, “I wish you could come.”

“Me, too,” Lucas says, looking up from his careful piping of mushroom caps and stems. “For your mother’s chestnut stuffing alone, I would swim across the Seine.”

But Lucas is joining his own mother in another arrondissement, for a much quieter supper, just the two of them, and then a midnight Mass.

“Flatterer. I’ll tell her you said that.”

“Tattler,” Lucas retorts. “First Lucille, now your _maman_. I meant it, though, about the stuffing.”

“I’ll ask her for the recipe.”

Nobly, he refrains from further comment about _stuffing_. They’re here to decorate the Bûche de Noël with little mushrooms of meringue. Their last effort, undertaken just this morning, burned black while they were otherwise occupied. The smell of that failure lingers in the kitchen like a tormented, sulfurous ghost, drifting beneath the powdery sweetness of sugar and cocoa.

The Bûche itself is store-bought, from the Carrefour by the gallery. It’s waiting in the refrigerator, squat and brown and neatly iced, ready to receive its spine of mushrooms and thin lines of false wood-grain, to be etched by Eliott with a toothpick.

He adds, “If you were coming, I’d fill your shoes with candy.”

“If that’s meant to be a comment on the size of my feet, I won’t stand for it,” Lucas says.

“Wear your largest tennis shoes,” Eliott says, “the ones with the platforms.” Lucas elbows him. “What? That’s how you get more. Sophie, Arnaud’s kid, that’s her tactic. Last year she used her sister’s boots.”

“I don’t need _any_ candy,” Lucas says, obstinate. “I’m not a child.”

As a matter of fact, he _has_ set aside a few papillotes for Lucas, in flavors of lavender and Mirabelle and cassis. The chocolates hail from the confiserie four streets away; he chose them with great care under the gimlet eye of Madame la confiseuse. He made the wrappers himself, out of red and green paper and slid a drawing into each: a hedgehog and raccoon wreathed in mistletoe; a hedgehog and racoon lost in the snow; a hedgehog balanced haphazardly on the shoulders of a raccoon, placing a star at the top of a Christmas tree. He won’t put them in Lucas’ shoes, though—they’ll be squashed, Lucas will jam his feet in without looking—they’ll be waiting on Lucas’ pillow when he returns home from Mass tomorrow, shuffling, tired, unwinding his scarf blearily from his neck.

Someday, Eliott thinks, we’ll have our own Réveillon dinner. We’ll have friends and family around our table, around our turkey and its stuffing, for which Lucas will have used my mother’s chestnut recipe, yes, friends and family, and maybe even children…

“What are you smiling about?” Lucas asks, already half-smiling himself.

“Nothing,” Eliott says. “It’s a surprise.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> There is no real posting schedule. Expect sporadic updates a few times a week until we run out of steam (or until Eliott Season happens and we combust).
> 
> Feel free to contact either of us on tumblr ([@hallo_catfish](https://hallo-catfish.tumblr.com/), [@xiangyu](https://xiangyu.tumblr.com/)) if you (a) have any recipes or scenarios you'd like covered or (b) you notice errors in my abysmal French. Or leave us a comment below.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading!


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